Holidays

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Based on John 1:1-14

     Little Hattie, determined to give her hero the highest image and magnify his achievements, wrote the following in her history examination-"Abraham Lincoln was born Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin which he built himself."  Lincoln was indeed a great man but historians, I think, are universal agreement that he did all of his building after he was born.  In fact, you will find this to be the pattern in all biographies except one.  And that is what makes Christmas so paradoxical.  It is the story of one who is born into a world that he literally made himself. John says, " through Him all things were made, without  Him nothing was made that has been made."  Jesus made the very stage of history on which he played history's greatest rolethe Saviour of the world.  He who made the stars became the Star on that stage lit up by the Star of Bethlehem.  What this means is, Christmas began long before it even started.  Dale Evans Rogers wrote, Christmas my child is always It was always in the heart of God, It was born there Only He could have thought of it. Like God, Christmas is timeless and eternal, From everlasting to everlasting.

     Not only was Jesus crucified before the foundation of the world, He was also born then, for Christmas like the cross is both historical and eternal.  Christmas comes near the end of the year and this is very appropriate because it makes it a climactic event.  That is what it is in God's plan for the whole of history before Christmas was in anticipation of it's coming.  

     I read of a woman who was caught up in the Christmas rush and when she saw some
Christmas cards on sale she grabbed them.  When she got home she quickly got them into envelopes and sent them off in the mail.  With a sense of satisfaction at both her economy and efficiency, she sat down and opened one of her bargain cards to read the message.  It said in bold print-THIS CARD IS JUST TO SAY A GIFT IS ON THE WAY.  Haste makes waste is often true and she blew it, but God did not.  This was the message of the Old Testament-the law was just to say God's gift of grace is on its way.  Christmas was the divine event toward which the Old Testament was every moving.

     The paradox of it all is that this eternal divine event, in the heart of God, was so human. The genealogy of the Christ child was human.  It was a line that came down through kings and heros, to be sure, but it also was full of sinners.  The paradox is that Jesus was the only baby ever born who had a choice of His heritage.  Nobody else ever choose where, when, or to whom they would be born.  But Jesus chose the time and place, the clime and race, where He would show the world God's face.  He not only built the stage He chose the cast for the greatest story ever told.  

     An eight year old boy came home from school and thrilled his parents with the news that he had been selected to announce the characters for the Christmas pageant.  His father was so elated he went out and bought him the finest suit he could find.  To give his son some assurance he pinned the names of the characters of the nativity on the inside of his new coat. When the characters appeared on stage the boy announced, "this is Jesus in the manger and Mary is nearby with Joseph standing next to her.  The three men are..." His mind went blank, he could not remember and so he took a quick look inside in coat prepared for just such an emergency and he blurted out,"Hart, Shaffner, and Marx!"  

     He made a mistake and chose the wrong names but Jesus made no such mistake.  He deliberately chose the characters that are forever linked to Him in the Christmas story.  The three wise men, or kings, add some statue to the cast but most of them are rather commonplace.  If  you chose your parents would you have chosen Joseph and Mary?  Nice people, but rather low on the totem pole of economic security.  Okay for those who have no choice but He who could have chosen anyone, chose them.  Then he chose to have His birth first announced to the shepherds, one of the lowest classes of people available.  Plan before the foundation of the world, and this is what He chose?  The angels give it a touch of class but let's face it, the Christmas cast is so humbly human.  Conceived, planned, organized and arranged by heaven yet look at  how earthly and human a story it is

1. The earthly need for taxes to keep the Roman government going led to Caesar's       decree that got Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. 2. The earthly need to obey government law led them to risk going so near her time delivery. 3. The lack of accommodations that led to Jesus being born in a stable looks more like short-sighted human planning rather than eternal heavenly planning. 4. The wise men having to sneak out of  town and head back home by a different route to avoid the anger of Herod, seems so earthly  and fallibly human.  

     I can think of no other event in history so full of paradox. It is so heavenly yet so earthly. Consider these examples:The Word from which all wisdom comes could not speak. The Power by which all exists was a baby weak. He whom the heavens could not contain, lying in a manger. Unto His own he came but was treated like a stranger. For Him who made all space, there was no room. For Him who made all light, there was gloom. He who wipes all tears away entered flesh and wept He who neither slumbers nor sleeps, became tired and slept.

     The entire life of the God-Man was a series of paradoxes. He made all the laws of nature but became subject to those laws. He who cannot be tempted became subject to temptation. He who is the bread of life became hungry. He who is the water of life became thirsty. He, the Spirit of Liberty, became a slave to the limitations of flesh even to the point of death. No life ever lived has been so paradoxical.  1.  He never enjoyed a Christmas but had He not lived there never would have been a Christmas to enjoy. 2.  He never wrote a book but more books have been written about Him than any other who has ever lived. 3.  He never wrote a song or painted a picture but more songs and art portray His life than any other who has ever lived.  Frederick Knowles said, "O Christ of contrasts; infinite paradox, yet life's explainer."     The point is the whole story of His life is a mysterious combination of the human and the divine.  When you mix these two ingredients the result is inevitable-paradox.  Let's look at some specific examples from John's account.  

     I.  THE INFINITE BECOMES AN INFANT.

     John tells us that the Word became flesh.  He has just made it perfectly clear that the Word was none other than God and was with God from the beginning.  Who is this, so weak and helpless,    Child of lowly Hebrew maid, Rudely in a stable sheltered,    Coldly in a manger laid? 'Tis the Lord of all creation,    Who this wondrous path hath trod; He is God from everlasting, And to everlasting God.

     What a paradox that the Word, the ultimate source of all wisdom was reduced to the level of an infant who could not say a word.  The Word became inarticulate.  The infinite most high reduced to an infants cry.  Was ever such a story told of an eternal son yet one day old?  If God wanted to communicate with ants He would take on the form of an ant and speak ant language.  This is a logical necessity.  The infinite must become finite in appearance to relate to the finite.  This we see in the Old Testament when God appeared in the form of a man.  But Christmas is something new.  The infinite no longer merely masks Himself as finite; He actually enters into the finite and becomes a man.  And not a man on the upper level of his being as an adult but the lower level of his being, as a baby.  The infinite becomes an infant.  You can't get any higher than infinite you can't get any lower than a man than an infant.  God took the paradox as far as it can be taken.  From being the source of all life, Jesus was reduced to the level of the least that human life can be, in the womb of Mary.  

     This is why Christmas is our most wonder filled holiday.  It is based on an event that is so mysterious and wondrous that man is compelled to celebrate it with more wonder than anything else he celebrates.  We strive to add the elements of mystery and surprise to Christmas.  We hide gifts and make sure there is the suspense of the unknown that helps build anticipation.  What can be more appropriate than mystery to magnify that day when the Infinite became an infant.  

     As Christians, we know about the incarnation so well that we forget Christians struggled for centuries to figure out how to state what happened when God became man.  Samuel Zwemer in his book, The Glory Of The Manger, describes some of the process of history in coming to grasp more fully the mystery of the Incarnation.  

     At first, Christians stressed that Jesus was divine.  He was the Son of God living in a human body, but  His mind was not  a human mind.  But this meant Jesus was not fully a man. His humanity was incomplete.  So they rejected this view.  Then they said Jesus was God and man.  This sounded good but it led to the idea that God just took over the body and mind of a man.  This meant there were two persons, the Son of God and the son of man that coexisted. This theory also came to be rejected.  Then by the fourth century Christian theologians developed a way of describing the Incarnation that has become the orthodox view ever since. Jesus was the perfect combination of deity and humanity.  He had both natures in one person. He was not 50% God and 50% man but 100% God and 100% man.  He was fully God and fully man in one person.  

     The point I am making is that what we celebrate at Christmas is such a paradox of mystery that it took centuries just to learn how best to describe it.  Richard Crashaw wrote,

"Welcome all wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span, Summer and Winter, Day in Night! Heaven in earth, and God in man! Great little One!  Whose all-embracing birth, Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth!"

     C. S. Lewis in The Chronicles Of Narnia, has Queen Lucy say, "In our world too a stable once had something in it bigger than the whole world."  That is the paradox of Christmas. Next, look at

     II.  THE INFINITE BECOMES INTIMATE.

     John says not only did the Word become flesh but He dwelt among us.  He not only became one of us, He became one with us.  Christmas is not only the celebration of birth but of relationship.  When a Jr. boy reads about romance his favorite word is probably ick.  But when he gets a little older his vocabulary changes when he meets a girl and discovers the beauty of relationship.  It is no longer a icky idea but an experience of intimacy.  Words, ideas and concepts become much more real when they are embodied in a person.  When the most high became most nigh, He became our neighbor and our friend and our brother.  The Infinite became intimate.  Christopher Smart wrote,God all-bounteous, all-creative Whom no ills from good dissuade Is incarnate, and a native Of the very world He made,

     This is a shocking paradox when you realize just how close and intimate God became with man.  The Word became flesh and the Greek word for flesh is sarx.  The same word used in other texts such as1. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. 2. Paul said in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. 3. Paul said we are not to walk after the flesh and live in the flesh . 4. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. 5. The works of the flesh are contrasted with the fruit of the Spirit. 6. We are not to glory in the flesh.

     Yet with all of these negatives the New Testament makes it clear that Jesus has come in the flesh.  Incarnation means in the flesh.  Jesus was God in the flesh.  The paradox of a pure and holy Spirit entering into the weakness and fallenness  of flesh is so shocking that Dan Erwin, professor of preaching at Bethel College, could even illustrate it with the story of Frankenstein.  

     Mary Shelley, who wrote the story in the 19th century, wrote it as a sort of romance.  Dr. Frankenstein is the scientist who created the miserable monster who wandered in the forest seeking friendship.  But whenever he tried to develop a relationship people were repelled by his ugliness.  Finally, the monster returns to his creator and pleads with him to make him a partner, he concludes his plea with these words-"I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects.  This being you must create."  

     Here was the pathetic cry for intimacy; the universal hunger of all intelligent life.  It is the endless cry of man and God heard that cry and answered that prayer when the Word became flesh.  Man in his fallen state is like Frankenstein with the image of God so marred that he is ugly in his flesh and repulsive.  But because he still has the need for love and acceptance, God so loved this Frankenstein-the world-that He gave His only begotten Son to dwell among us. The end result will not be the bride of Frankenstein but the bride of Christ; pure and spotless and without one wrinkle left by the fall.  He became like us that we might become like Him. God went the limit; He gave the very best that He had-He gave Himself.  This is the intimacy we celebrate at Christmas.  

     This paradox is what sets Christianity apart from the great religions of the world. Judaism and Islam are both Bible oriented and monotheistic and full of what is good and noble.  But there are limits to what God will do to save man in their theology.  They refuse to believe He could go as far as the Incarnation and become one with man.  This kind of intimacy of God and man does not fit their theology.  Only the Christian has the Incarnation; the celebration of God's love without limits.  This is the simple message of the profound paradox of the Incarnation.  

     W. B. J. Martain tells of an old missionary who finally got an assistant out of the seminary. When he arrived he called the natives together to welcome him.  The young man only spoke English so the older man had to translate his message to the people.  He began like this, "we must always remember that there is an infinite and qualitative distinction between the eternal Gospel and all the historical manifestations of it under the contingencies of human existence." The old missionary just stood there dumbfounded as the young man paused for him to translate.  The old man just said, "he says he loves you and he's glad to be here."  

     The world is full of theological volumes which give profound and complex explanations of the Incarnation, but when you come right down to it, the message God intends is very simpleHe loves you and is glad to be here. The Infinite became intimate.  He did so because there is just so much you can communicate with words.  God had given a great deal of revelation concerning His love for man in the Old Testament.  But words have their limitations.  So the final revelation of God was not just uttered, it was born.  F.W. Boreham put it, "The Word was made fleshsoft, warm, live flesh that throbbed and felt and developed and matured, as all sound and healthy flesh will.  And this Word -Jesus-is God; He is the pronunciation of the unpronounceable Word!"

     Jesus is the sweetest name we know because Jesus is God's fullest and finest Word.  That is why the angels could say to the shepherds- fear not.  If God had come into the world in the fullness of His Deity and not clothed in flesh, the shepherds would have plenty to fear.  One look and they would be dead.  But in the Christ child they could encounter God and feel comfortable.  For in Christ God is approachable.  There is no mention in the Christmas story of taking off ones shoes even though they bowed and worshipped the new born King.  It was holy ground but it was also common ground where God and man could meet for in Jesus God and man were intimately one.  

     Studies show that more than 65% of what we communicate is in body language.  We say much that is non-verbal by what we do.  The Word did this as well.  The Word became nonverbal and by what He did He said to the world, I love you.  Actions do speak louder than words.  There were plenty of words about the Messiah's coming but not until He actuallycame and the Word became flesh did anybody dream of celebrating.  

     We are to respond to God's body language with more than just words.  We are to have a body language of our own.  We are to so live and give that God's love in Christ becomes embodied again in us.  We are to perpetuate the paradox of the Word becoming flesh by doing.  Christmas is what God did; the Infinite becomes an infant, the Infinite becomes intimate.  You become the best Christian at Christmas by conveying to others the wonder of the paradoxes of Christmas.

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